iPhone Photo Library "Ghost" Space

In TouchCopy, select the Files folder on the left-hand side. Then select DCIM. You may see several sub-folders beginning with 100APPLE, then 101APPLE, 102APPLE, etc. That's where my ghost files were. They appeared to be the very first photos and videos I took after purchasing the phone, since they were numbered 0001, 0002, etc. The videos obviously took up the most space. (My guess is that they got cached there automatically the first time I synced the new phone with iTunes, because I wasn't quick enough to turn off Photo syncing in iTunes. After that first sync, I turned off Photo syncing, and the later photos weren't cached. Instead of photo syncing through iTunes, I use Photo Capture on my MacBook Air to download them with more control.) In the trial version of TouchCopy, I could select all of the files, but the Delete Selection button was grayed out. Once I activated the full version of TouchCopy, the Delete button became available, and I deleted the old files in each of those 10xAPPLE sub-folders. I didn't delete the folders themselves, just the files. After that, eject/disconnect your phone safely. Power off your phone, then power it back on and check your usage/free space.

You must have the full version of TouchCopy to delete the files. Rather than pay $25 for the full version, there's an offer to try another piece of software or service. When you sign up for the other trial (I selected stamps.com), you get an authentication code for TouchCopy. You just have to remember to cancel your trial of the other software or service before you get charged for it. Do so at your own risk.

Hope this works for everyone!

i had this problem too. There was a second folder of images from my old phone stored as Camera and camera2 (you can see them through ifunbox) they are called apple100 and apple101. This occurs when you have had two phones connected to your icloud account at some point. Itunes and the iphone only sees the current folder so you are stuck with this extra folder taking up space. Ifunbox would show me the second folder but not let me delete them. They appeared in my phone but in recently deleted. Deleting them from the phone would remove them from view but not delete them causing the 2gb ghost file.

This fix worked for me: restore phone from backup so you can see the photos on the phone in recently deleted. Do not delete them on the phone Instead restore them on the phone. This puts them in the main photo folder. Then delete them again. This puts them in the correct deleted items folder not the ghost one. Then i deleted them through ifunbox and they deleted correctly and more importantly iphone updates the fact they are deleted correctly and updates the space correctly. hoping this saves someone the 13 hours i spent trying to fix the issue without restoring the phone from new. Do not bother waiting the 3 hours at the genius bar as they will not only not know how the iphone works regarding the sequential folder numbering and the ghost issues it can cause but their only solution is to restore as new and lose all your messages set up all your accounts again etc..

There's a bug where Recently Deleted doesn't include all deleted photos. The workaround is to set the clock back: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8281

You might also check Messages app, where many photo attachments can be hiding. For each thread, tap Details, scroll down to the attachments, long tap (tap-and-hold) one of them, tap More… in the edit menu, then you can choose photos and delete them.

Launch iTunes, go to iTunes Preferences, Devices tab, and check the box to not sync automatically.

Connect the phone to iTunes, and click on the iPhone icon. Do the photos still show up in the memory usage scale? If not, just sync.

If they do show up back up the phone to iTunes. And also to iCloud for extra safety (do this on the phone, Settings/iCloud - Backup). If you have an encrypted backup be certain you know the passphrase.

Then Restore iOS and set up as a New phone. After the phone is set up click Restore Backup. Wait for it to finish, which can take a long time as it must sync your music and apps after restoring data. This will restore your messages and may fix the photos problem.

I had this exact same problem with my daughter's iPhone and was able to use i-funbox file browser on my Mac to find and remove a number of large .mov files that she had made on the iPhone. The app name is a little strange, but it is free and works great.

Open the Photos app. There will be a folder of recently deleted photos (a new feature in iOS 8.1). You will probably find the deleted images there. You can delete them permanently from that folder.

A user (txforever) found this solution:

Set your date back to September of 2014

Go back to photos. Although it may read "0", there should be some that need to be manually deleted.

-Ethan

Just discovered the same issue with my iPhone 5S 3GB of "ghost files" that don't appear in Photos.... and won't go away.

I saw there was alot of talk about TouchCopy as a paid solution to access the DCIM/xxxAPPLE folder to remove the foresaken images and movies.

There's a FREE app called iTools that lets you do the same thing, Google iTools for the link.

Hope that helps someone.

For me the issue was the "PhotoData" folder. It was over 500MB in size even though my photo library contained only 5 photos. I deleted the PhotoData folder by trusting my computer and using my file manager to delete it from my iPhone's storage.

TouchCopy is my savior. Same issue as everyone else: deleted all photos from phone, but still 400MB of ghost pictures in Photo Library. Nothing in Recently Deleted. Did the "change the date" trick, nothing happened. Sync'd and resync'd. Tried everything (except a restore). Downloaded TouchCopy for free (I guess it was the trial version). Just went through the folders, found a bunch of videos, deleted them and VOILA! ghost picture are gone. Now I've got just 2.4KB of ghost pictures (mostly album covers)(and yes, that's KB, not a typo). Ahhh, my phone can breath.

Thanks, Lawrence. I had already tried many of those steps, to no avail. I was close to doing the full restore and set up as a new phone, but I found that I could get TouchCopy for free by trying another product. TouchCopy did the trick. My iPhone photo library dropped from 4+GB to about 300MB. I also had a similar issue with the iMessage cache on my wife's iPhone and was able to get it fixed based on Kurty999's steps here: iOS 7 Messages (Saved) Can't Delete. Freed up 3-4GB. Thanks for the time you take to help me and others.

I haven't used TouchCopy, so I can't speak from first hand experience. See my response to Angeliki downunder

If deleting photos doesn't free the memory there is probably memory corruption on the phone, so restoring is a better approach to try first.

I just found this. It brought up over 500 pictures that were phantom photos. No 3rd party app necessary!

I have deleted photos from iphone 6 but the photo library still takes up a lot of space in internal storage. How can I d…

Go to Settings

1. Date & Time
2. Untoggle "Set Automatically"
3. Manually change the date back. For example, if today is March 15, 2015, choose August 1, 2014. (You can change it back once we're done)
4. Close out of that
5. Open "Photos"
6. Select "Albums"
7. If, like me, you had already cleared out everything from the Camera Roll and "Recently Deleted" folder, you'll smile to see that your "Recently Deleted" folder now has thousands of images back. Those are your phantom photos
8. Open it, "Select" and start deleting
9. Now, go back into Settings - General - Usage - Storage - Manage Storage - and you'll notice your Photo & Camera isempty if you deleted everything

Thanks, Lawrence. Found too many orphan images in various mysterious folders so gone for an iPhone restore. Seems to have removed the ghost files for now, yet to see what happens at subsequent syncs (i.e. if it is a IOS bug or just the consequence of the IOS update process itself).

Did you follow the instructions provided above? Reset your date? Checked Recently Deleted after doing so?

The Photo Library usage information directly correlates with the photos in your Photos app.

Cheers,

GB